


Sickness Unto Death

by whatsarasays



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heavy Angst, Metafiction, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Unrequited (Claire)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 11:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17661839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsarasays/pseuds/whatsarasays
Summary: Ada decided her one chance to get him out alive was to pull him taunt with his own values and draw a bow of lies across his strings.Let him believe they were going to be heroes, then leave him behind when they reached safety, none the wiser as to who she was or what she was there to do.(UNDER REVISIONS.)





	Sickness Unto Death

**Author's Note:**

> UNDER REVISIONS: I rushed into posting this story far too quickly and am unhappy with the result. However, it struck a chord with some folks who would like to see its continued existence, so I'm working on a re-write. Please come back when it's ready to see the light of day again!

By the end of it, he had seen her entirety. Even parts she never realized were there until he had called her bluff. The exposure had been searing, and its flashbulb brightness continued to linger, imprinted behind her eyelids.

Despite keeping him at a distance with barbed responses and cold retorts, Leon had refused to leave. Ada supposed she had welcomed it when she slid down that ladder to him after his first standoff with a mutated William Birkin in the basement of the Raccoon City Police Station. She had invited him in, however inadvertently.

His dedication had burned her and she had retaliated in anger. His unspoiled nature was too eager and too naive.  _Get out of the way, you don’t belong here,_  she scoffed. But the longer he stayed, the more her barkings became implorings.

She told him to leave. Sometimes cruelly. But his steadfastness remained, even as the darkness lapped away his innocence. He was determined to stay at her side. His virtue disallowed him to do anything otherwise. Somewhere along the way, he had decided that they, together, were to be the saving graces of humanity.

Nothing seemed to break his moral stronghold, not shrieking beasts nor hellish carnage. Certainly not her jibes and taunts. The bullet he took for her undoubtedly just strengthened his resolve (and marked him as her savior).

Tangled in too many stories already, she was at a loss as to how she could twist in such a way to protect him from herself.

Her one chance to get him out alive was to pull him taunt with his own values and draw a bow of lies across his strings. Kiss him softly (and more earnestly than she will ever admit) to quiet his babblings and protests, say she needed him (she did). Let him believe they were going to be heroes, then leave him behind when they reached safety, none the wiser as to who she was or what she was there to do.

Annette Birkin had ruined the plan, uncovered her secret like a twirling devil with a wry smile. He had stalked down the ramp, pinning her with a steady gaze, demanding answers. Recognizing her defeat, she pulled her weapon and demanded the sample from him.

And then, he had lowered his gun.

Exposing his chest to her, his wolfish eyes glinted beneath long lashes, “Then you shoot me. But I don’t think you can.”

And he was right.

Something in her gave way. So many paradigms crumbled beneath the veracity of his words. He claimed he didn’t trust her but showed more faith than a martyr when he opened his body to the mercy of her pistol.

A gun went off that was neither hers nor his.

The moment and the bridge shattered.

The sample skittered and bounced over the edge, abandoned so that he could grasp for her instead.

He had outright growled (“Shut up – I’ve got you.”) when she softly called for him to let her go. Her small body swinging over the chasm like a pendulum, tethered only by his desperate grip and collapsing metal. He begged, begged, begged her to hold on, just as she had earlier begged, begged, begged him to leave her behind.

“Take care of yourself, Leon.” Tears she didn’t know she had stung her eyes. She wished it was from the pain radiating through her shoulders – one carrying a bullet wound that was a mocking parody of the one he wore on his own shoulder and the other dislocated from the force of his hold.

She let herself fall.

It was the fastest way out of his life.

She tumbled down into the irrigation system below. The world floated past in slow motion and she acknowledged that this might be the end of all things.

Instead of an existence-ending impact, the water broke her fall and the filth baptized her back into her former shell. She retrieved the blue-capped vial, easily located, even in the murky vat.

The thought of her mission had given her the equilibrium she needed to keep going. It focused her. Clutching the sample, she dragged herself from the cistern and staggered along the metal catwalks, a makeshift bandage tied around her arm to stop the bleeding.

The exit was nearly within reach when she caught sight of him again. With strength she shouldn’t have wasted, she slid the anti-tank missiles down to him on a fallen rafter, and in the same horrifying moment, realized her attempt to shake his hold had failed. She was unable to leave this ewe on the altar and began to wonder at this strange compulsion to cut him free.

Ada retrieved herself from her recollections with a sigh.

She glanced at the file splayed open on the hotel desk.

The dossier described a mountain boy from Virginia who hunted deer, listened to Nirvana, and dropped out of university to join the police academy. A black-and-white photo of him peered back with eyes that brimmed with determination and something that reminded her of mischief. Such an unassuming carriage for the would-have-been sacrificial lamb.

Ada noticed a dark smug on his photograph. She languidly wiped at it, knowing it couldn’t be removed. She stared at it for a long time.

In the end, she decided to categorize everything in terms of repayment. If everything was a debt that could be wiped clean by popping caps into dogs or hurling rocket launchers onto flaming platforms, then her mind could piece itself back together. She preferred to operate in the grey, but when came to him, she craved acidic reduction. May oversimplification dissolve these tangled thoughts and conflicting binds.

Sitting up straight, she dragged the manila folder across the desk and tipped it over the edge into the rubbish bin below. She whispered without malice,

“Good riddance, Leon.”

 

* * *

 

Claire crouched down into his field of view, “Come on, Leon, we need to get you to a hospital.”

She gently smiled at him as she spoke and offered him a hand up.

Leon glanced at her hand hanging in the air, waiting for him. His eyes tracked down her sweet face for a moment, before returning her smile with a washed-out version of his own and nodding, “Yeah, okay.”

The trio of survivors had briefly paused along the deserted road to regain their strength. His eviscerated shoulder throbbed, and, in many ways, he knew this wound would be permanent.

Throughout their trek to civilization, Claire had tried to catch his eye like she had when they first met. Between chatting with Sherry, she had tossed out flirtatious quips and slid him playful glances in the attempt to conjure the spark they had during their drive into Raccoon City. He had found the most he could give in reply were reassuring nods, polite acknowledgments, and, on the off occasion, half-hearted jokes.

Pieces of him were missing.

Claire was a creature of the light. He, too, had been one once. Now, even though he sat in the sunshine, the haunt of gore and grief crawled over him and settled into his bones. Claire was real and warm and bright, but all he could think about was carrion and a deceitful hand on his knee in the back of decrepit tram car and how that same, slender hand had stayed the reaper’s blade (again, and again, and again).

He deliberately pried his eyelids open and stared into the sun, hoping the distant ball of gas would destroy his retinas and burn away the things he had seen; char the memory of sinking a bullet into an infected Marvin Branagh; sear the images of streets slathered in viscera; blacken the sound of a shot – the second fired from the scientist’s gun, this one too swift to throw himself onto – as it thumped into Ada. The pain became overwhelming and his eyes snapped shut of their own accord. He wished it were that easy to erase.

He did not let Claire help him up and pulled himself to his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit goes to [nuricurry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17294792) for idea that Leon is from the Appalachia region.


End file.
